Wild At Heart (Film Review)

1990 The Samuel Goldwyn Company
Written and Directed by: David Lynch (based upon the novel of the same name by Barry Gifford)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Crispin Glover, Diane Ladd, Isabella Rossellini, and Harry Dean Stanton
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 124 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 6/10

Sailor loves Lula, but after he kills a hitman in self defense, a hitman sent by Lula's mother herself, he does hard time. Lula's waiting when Sailor gets out, and the two strike out on the road, their love and constant lovemaking taking them only so far before they run out of cash. Suddenly, Lula's got morning sickness, and Sailor is tempted by a job that could land him back behind bars, but also give he and Lula some much needed cash. Can Sailor and Lula's love survive in such a wild, weird world?
While I don't bow down at the altar of Lynch, I don't exactly dislike the man's oeuvre either. I think he's made a couple masterpieces, as well as some other fine work, but some things I'm not as fond of. Wild at Heart is a mean, nasty movie that I don't love, and that, without an incredible Nicolas Cage at the center, I wouldn't even like. Lynch goes all out to create a disgusting world in order to test the hypothesis "Can love exist in a horrible place?" and boy is the world of Wild at Heart horrible. I've heard some say that the world Lynch creates here is just a metaphor for average, everyday life in America, and for that, all I can say is," Where the hell do you live?!" I've lived in South Louisiana my entire life, a place where crime is many times what it is in most places across the country, but I still think it is a beautiful, wonderful place. The world in Lynch's film just feels disgusting for the sake of disgusting, summed up in a closeup of Willem Dafoe's rotting false teeth smooshed through pantyhose. It's so gross, and yet, Cage's performance and line-readings are so pure, he single-handedly lifts the film from the slime to something watchable. It's quite tough to objectively argue that Cage isn't the finest actor of his generation, and he bails Lynch out here mightily. Otherwise, Wild at Heart isn't worth watching.